Texas Tech Today

Who Is Studying Online (and Where)

Doug Lederman

January 5, 2018

Inside Higher Ed - New federal data show continued (and accelerating) growth in online course taking in 2016, even as overall college enrollments were flat or falling. Big gainers: Western Governors and Arizona State. Big losers: the big for-profits.

Not surprisingly given that fact, for-profit institutions dominate the list of individual
institutions that experienced meaningful drops in online enrollment from 2015 to 2016,
led by the University of Phoenix, American Public University System and Kaplan University.
Phoenix's drop was particularly stark -- more than 30,000 students.

But not all for-profit institutions had similar fates: Grand Canyon University grew
by nearly 25 percent, and institutions such as Walden, Capella and Ashford Universities
held steady or grew modestly.

The biggest gainers among nonprofit institutions were behemoths like Western Governors
University and Arizona State University. A few, including Liberty University and Baker
College, lost significant enrollments.